Eduarda Mateus

**  June update** 

** I have reached full capacity again. This means I don't have availability to take on a new client at the moment. If you would still wish to get in touch with me, I will certainly respond and can give you an update on my potentially availability.**

I give consultations on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

(Mondays - online only)

If you would wish to get in touch with me, I would then offer you an initial brief consultation on Zoom, at no cost. 

You can request a full 60-minute initial consultation session (£75) in person or online, as you would prefer.

Please see below for further details.

Best,

Eduarda 

I am both BACP accredited and Emotion-Focused Therapy accredited. I end training in EMDR this Dec. I am a trainee supervisor.

If you are noticing that it becomes too difficult to manage challenging experiences, as your familiar ways of approaching these no longer seem to work, you are not alone. Originally helpful response methods can eventually be experienced as unfitting with, or challenging for, the present life circumstances /relationships.

For example, one might try to only notice what they learned to believe is acceptable / expected, or safest, eventually losing touch with their most authentic feelings and needs.

Emotions signal what we experience in every moment. We are most securely empowered when we are in touch with how we authentically feel. However, when we habitually block unwanted emotions, they don’t 'just go away', as they are organic energy inside our body. E-motion is body energy in motion.

When suppressed, e-motions such as sadness, anger, shame, and guilt build-up within the body and are eventually released with less self-control. They can become uncontainable, easily triggered. Suppression can possibly lead to too much anxiety, physical tension/pain, and illness, and it can become more and more difficult to fully appreciate the present experiences, sometimes developing depression.

It does not matter how overwhelmed you might feel when you finally seek therapeutic help. Your willingness to help yourself and the trust nurtured and experienced in the therapeutic relationship are significant 'ingredients' to therapy success, facilitating experiential changes.

I can work at depth using Emotion-Focused Therapy's well researched, evidence-based methods. I invite you to bring to session what feels most intense or in priority, and then we work collaboratively, processing any emotional blocks (emerging from learned internal dynamics from present time or from longer ago) such as guilt, shame, fear, and accessing empowering emotion available in your body.

The initial consultations offer us quality opportunity:

- to identify what we are working on, and 

- to develop our therapeutic alliance (therapeutic relationship)

Development in further consultations:

- I encourage you to notice how you feel in the moment or have been experiencing (perhaps in build up) before the session;

- I follow what you share and help you identify what needs attention;

- We process your presenting experience with the most appropriate approach I can identify in the moment - this could include focus on the coherence / incoherence between body and mind (thoughts), processing emotion-focused therapy tasks, representations with objects. When the experience leads to great overwhelm or shut down, my approach is to bring you to a state of sense of safety in the consulting room with me.

- We work collaboratively with every experience you present.

- Together, we identify what is important to follow up on.

- In some cases, we can identify whether EMDR would be a good resource to process some experiences. This requires further therapeutic planning, together, and in my own time.

- Every session begins with a good check-in, a development of the material towards processing of experience, and a process reflection at the end of the session. This is why my sessions are 60-minutes long. The first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes are very important!

Review of our work and endings: 

- This is done regularly. Process reflection is done in every session and when therapeutic 'milestones' are achieved, we review how you feel about  the value of continuing therapy / personal development, or you feel ready to end. 

- Ending a therapeutic process is the end of a relationship. It is important and advisable to honour this ending with conscious care. 

- Sudden endings can represent an escape to something that feels unresolved / difficult to express - I will always value and respect your need to end. I would encourage you to address your need, ending consciously.

I give consultations in my quiet, private consulting room in Edinburgh West End. I can see you in person and on Zoom, as it is most convenient to you.

The first step to gain the most from a therapeutic relationship is when a person desires to explore themselves, their life experiences / relationships. Then, searching for professional therapeutic help can be an unfamiliar experience. And choosing a new therapist can also feel uneasy; maybe you had an unhelpful previous experience or perhaps it was difficult to end a previous therapeutic process.

On the first session, I invite you to share what brings you to see me. If this is your first experience of talking with a therapist, I can help you in this initial contact.

We explore your own and unique life context experience, and I help you identify therapeutic goals. What would you hope to experience differently, which has not been helpful for some time?

The nature of our initial dialogue organically offers us a good sense of what it might feel like for us to work together. I often share some details of how I work therapeutically, and how I might facilitate the processing of your individual experience and related 'obstacles'. I can offer you some specific examples based on what you are sharing with me.

If meeting with me feels right to us both, we then talk about how we might go forward. We can also agree to review our work after 4-6 sessions, to help you appreciate whether you wish to proceed further.

Helping you gain clarity and appreciate or discover your Self is the focus of my work.